Date is approximate (and a long time ago).
We got a late start, wandered off-route, and ended up spending a cold October night (in shorts) at the top. I remember a beautiful full moon rising over Half Dome. I also remember it was so calm that we could hear people discussing their dinner as they left the Ahwanee while we starved on our little dirt-patch bivy. Walked off the next day.

great times with Michael aus Deutschland- he snuck a couple king cans up and produced them at top. plans to finish with crown jewel after the arches were changed after our food was grabbed by opportunistic rodents. descent was pretty gnarly.
awesome route!

Super Slide (II 5.9, 5 pitches) -- October 10, 2008 -- Mary and I climbed this route on a cold, windy day in October. Mary wore a down jacket for the entire climb. The second pitch was nice, following a thin crack to a thin smeary face to a perfect splitter. The top three pitches were great with increasingly difficult climbing. The final crack was stellar, but more like thin hands than wide fingers for me.

Peruvian Flake (5.10a, 1 pitch) -- October 12, 2010 -- Mary and I climbed this excellent route while scouting the start to Royal Arches. I don't think it's a 5.10, but the moves were super fun and the pro is bomber.

Royal Arches (III 5.7 A0, 15 pitches) -- October 13, 2010 -- Finally climbed this one on a hot sunny day in October. We did the 5.8 alternate start, which was great. The chimney looked aweful, especially with a backpack. We made excellent progress even with many other parties on the route. We took about 7 hr for the climb and 3 hr for the descent.

Lead every pitch, we moved fast. We were the first ones up in the morning. No one would have caught up except we made the mistake of taking only one rope. The raps took forever! Some guys with two ropes passed us up near the last rap.

Climbed with Dirk (Diggler). It was a COLD morning, so we didn't start until 10 AM. Took us 10 hours to climb it an get back down. It was the most crowded I've seen it (climbed twice before), which delayed us quite a bit. On one of the rappels the rope got stuck and Dirk climbed to retrieve it. Over all it was a fun climb and Dirk is a great climbing partner.

Climbed Royal Arches w/ Brad Mastros. The climb itself went fine; we encountered like 5 other parties on the route including Kris & Dirk from SP. We had kinda of a late start; got off-route like twice and did a friction run-out variation on pitch 5. We moved slow and so we topped out at ~ 6:00pm.....just before dark. Since we didn't bring a 2nd rope for the rappel descent and we heard horror stories on the treacherous "North Dome gully" descent (known for it share of accidents), we opted to hike up ~ 1500 feet and hopefully find the North Dome trail back down through Yosemite Falls and down to the Valley. A very long, long way out. It was dark & too cold to bivy with the clothes we brought. Dehydration was kicking in and I started to staggered. Luckly, we found a creek to replenish with water. After trashing for nearly 4 hrs in the dark , we finally found the North Dome trail at 10:54pm. We thought we're home-free. Not! We lost the trail by the granite slabs near Yosemite Point. It was now even colder & windy! We searched for what it seemed like an hour. Finally, found it and started down. We're both exhausted (ran out of food and had limited water from the creek). We took several breaks on the way down. At approx 4:30am we staggered onto Brad's car parked at the Ahwahee Hotel parking lot. We collapsed into our tent just before 5:00am (we had been out 19 hours on the go).

"Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks. Great success shooting the knife into the piano. The woodworms are so bad and eat hell out of all furniture that you can always claim the woodworms did it."
--Ernest Hemingway